GOP Must Go On The Offensive and Call Out Democrats’ Extremism to Win 2024 Elections

Written by Robert Knight

Most pundits credit the Democrats’ election victories last Tuesday to the nation’s apparently unquenchable lust for abortion.

They have a point.

Democrats kept the focus off potent issues such as crime, raging inflation, millions of illegal immigrants, the war on domestic energy production, and President Biden’s bizarre behavior.

Using abortion like a club, Democrats in Virginia flipped the state House and kept the Senate, albeit by paper-thin majorities. They kept control in Fairfax and Loudoun counties.

They retook several seats in New Jersey and won a crucial Supreme Court seat in Pennsylvania. They came ridiculously close to taking the governorship in Mississippi, of all places.

It worked like a wicked charm, especially in Ohio. Voters approved by 56% to 44% a sweeping amendment that enshrines abortion without limits in the state constitution.

It was the seventh straight victory for abortion on state ballots since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

This is especially serious given that the Buckeye State went for Donald Trump twice and is considered reliably Republican.

The satirical Babylon Bee announced that, given the abortion vote, Ohio State has replaced its mascot Brutus Buckeye with Moloch, the ancient Canaanite deity to which parents sacrificed their infants.

“’It’s been a long time coming,’ said Moloch,” the Bee wrote. “’Bit by bit, I have once again convinced people that the way you get what you want out of life is by killing your kid.’”

The Bee also wrote that “the Republican Party checked itself into a rehab facility this morning, having hit rock-bottom in the throes of its addiction to losing.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are celebrating the guarantee of more abortions as if it were Christmas morning.

Washington Post Style section columnist Monica Hesse treated the whole thing like it was great fun.

Noting that Mr. Biden is tanking even among Democrats, she joked that “if I were Biden, I would think about changing my name to Abe Ortion.” She also suggested that Democrats rally around a colloquial term for female anatomy.

Overall, Republicans sounded an uncertain, defensive trumpet. They let Democrats define them as extremists for wanting any limits at all.

The old joke was that the GOP’s election slogan is “Republicans: We’re not as bad as you think.”

This time around, they fine-tuned it to “Republicans: We’re not as extreme on abortion as you think.”

Clearly, this doesn’t work.

Aided by massive cash from the abortion lobby and left-wing donors such as George Soros, Democrats outspent the GOP in most races. Even if they hadn’t, the rabidly pro-abortion media would have carried many across the finish line.

Although long overdue and morally and legally sound, the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe has been the gift that keeps on giving to Democrats. One wag likened the Republicans’ plight to the dog that caught the car. Now what?

Washington Post political columnist Dan Balz says that although abortion was key, there was more to this election. Democrats “have seized on two issues — abortion and Republican extremism — to put Republicans on the defensive. This has produced a powerful election machine.”

Indeed. It’s easy to get tagged with the “MAGA extremist” label. Just be to the right of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Dissecting Kentucky Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s abortion-centered reelection, Mr. Balz wrote with a straight face that Mr. Beshear’s “message of working across party lines whenever possible is one that Biden preached in 2020 and has continued to espouse as president.”

Really? In his bizarre, red-tinged speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on Sept. 1, 2022, Mr. Biden reached across the aisle this way:

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

He added that such people

“are destroying American democracy.”

He once told a Black audience that Republicans “are going to put y’all back in chains.”

There were a couple of bright spots for the GOP. On Long Island, New York, Republican Ed Romaine became Suffolk County executive in a landslide.

“The GOP now occupies all the countywide seats in Nassau and Suffolk counties — both county executive seats, the district attorney and comptroller’s offices, as well as all four congressional seats,” the New York Post reported.

In Loudoun County, Virginia, Republican Bob Anderson apparently ousted soft-on-crime Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj. A George Soros beneficiary, Ms. Biberaj outraised her opponent by nearly a 10-to-1 margin and may demand a recount.

Going forward toward 2024, the Republican Party might want to do a couple of things. First, candidates need to ignore the inevitable advice to enlarge Moloch’s altar in order to be more politically viable.

Selling one’s soul never ends well.

Instead, they must make a much stronger case for life while exposing Democrats’ extremism on sexual and economic issues. Talking about Mr. Biden’s age or incompetence doesn’t cut it.

They must connect the dots on ever-higher prices, treason at our border, flash mob shoplifting, Big Brother mandates and turning the FBI into a gang that criminalizes parents and political opponents.

They could then deploy former Democrats to summarize: “If you still vote Democrat, you are enabling America’s descent into madness and lawlessness.”

Robert Knight is a former Los Angeles Times news editor and writer and was a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This column was originally published by The Washington Times.

He has been published by the Wall Street Journal, National Review, the Christian Post, AmericanThinker.com, DailyCaller.com, Townhall.com, OneNewsNow.com and many others.  He has co-authored three books and written 10, including “Liberty on the Brink: How the Left Plans to Steal Your Vote” (D. James Kennedy Ministries, 2020) and “The Coming Communist Wave: What Happens If the Left Captures All Three Branches of Government” (D. James Kennedy Ministries, 2020) . 

You can follow him on Twitter at @RobertKnight17, and his website is roberthknight.com.